Cairo Programming Language: Insights and Challenges in Starknet

Cairo offers unique opportunities for blockchain developers despite its current immaturity and limited resources.

### Exploring Cairo and Starknet: A Developer's Journey
* 🌐 Cairo is a programming language for Starknet, a layer 2 ZK Roll-Up on Ethereum, which intrigued many developers, including myself, to **transition from Solidity to Cairo for innovative DeFi projects**.
* 💻 My journey began when my company pivoted towards building a **DeFi protocol on Starknet**, prompting our team to **learn and code in Cairo** over the past **three to five months**.
* 📚 Despite the challenges, such as the language being in an **alpha version with limited resources and boilerplate code**, I remain optimistic about the Starknet ecosystem and the **smart minds contributing to it**.
* 🔍 Unlike the mature Solidity space, Cairo lacks extensive libraries and resources, making it **difficult to troubleshoot issues**; however, the documentation on the StarkNet website and OpenZeppelin’s Cairo contracts repository are **valuable learning tools**.
* 🛠 I recommend aspiring developers to **read code extensively** and practice by implementing simple projects like a **staking protocol** to familiarize themselves with Cairo.
* 🔒 As we work on security auditing within the Cairo ecosystem, we aim to **address the security pitfalls** and contribute **valuable insights to the community**, recognizing the importance of **building secure protocols**.
* 🚀 The future of Cairo and Starknet looks promising, and while it may not reach the level of **Solidity and EVM**, it offers a **crucial path for scaling blockchain technology**.

Cairo and Starknet, which is, if people don't know, Starknet is a layer 2 ZK Roll-Ups on Ethereum. Cairo is their programming language, and I'm interested in how did you get started with Cairo, and how is it different from Ethereum, and what did you do there. Yeah, so basically, with my normal job that I'm a blockchain developer, I started with Solidity, but then the company business pivoted off to we wanted to do something innovative, something good from a business standpoint, and the leaders of the company decided that building a DeFi protocol and Starknet is a great move. So then everyone from the team starts learning Cairo, started coding with it, me included, and yeah, basically, I have been coding with Cairo for the past three or four months, or five months maybe. Um, and I have already felt the technology, which is an inside joke with Cairo because there you have this value type that is called Fels, are everywhere, right? So everything is spelled like strings, ins, everything is

like addresses felt exactly everything is felt, and I can say I'm very bullish on the Starknet ecosystem. I think, uh, I like to follow the smart people, and I know there are lots and lots of smart people there in this ecosystem working and building, uh, now OpenZeppelin or building their, uh, the same library with good best practices contracts like they have for solution for Ethereum, and some other organizations are starting to work there and to build on Starknet. This is great. Anything the product of, uh, that I was building will do pretty good. Uh, with that said, I would say I'm much more bullish on the Ethereum and the Solidity space. I mean, I'm just more attracted to it. It fits my personality better probably, uh, even though Solidity, because one of the problems I, you can say, related to Cairo is that it's still an alpha version. I mean, it's not even a beta version. There is a lot of boilerplate in the code. There's a lot of ceremony you

have to write some code that you shouldn't have to write. Uh, it's like copy-paste it everywhere. Um, also, you do not have four loops, for example. The language does not work correctly with them. You need to do recursion instead. Um, there are some small, small stuff like this. And of course, you do not have much already written code like libraries. Open Zeppelin are just starting to build it out. But with Solidity, even though there, you still, you do not, it's the version still starts with a zero. We do not have even version one in Solidity. I think the space is much, much more mature, of course, because it's like six or seven years old now. So, I like it a lot. It fits me better as a personality. But I'm very bullish on StarkNet and on Cairo. And I think for some people, it will be one of the best bets. Yeah, interesting. So, yeah, it's very interesting what you're saying that both of them are very early and immature. And Cardio even is even

newer so you have less resources left, less places to learn from, and the language is, like, to be honest, pretty awful. But now they are working on Cairo 1.0, right? That's going to be released soon, which is going to be much more, much better with for loops and other types. It's interesting. So, do you have any tips for people who want to get started with Cairo? How did you learn Cairo? What kind of resources did you use, especially where it's very hard to find them for Cairo time? Yeah, that's one of the bad things; there is not so much information with it because with Solidity, when you get some compilation error or whatever, you can just Google it. Solidity got up to this point; now the ecosystem grew enough, but with Cairo, you cannot do this. If you Google it, you get nothing, so it's kind of shitty. But there are great docs on the StarkNet website. You can find great docs both for the StarkNet ecosystem and for Cairo, and you can also

one advice I can give you is to go through Open Zeppelin's Cairo contracts repository. There, you can find the best of the best practices. You can see how to protect yourself from underflows, overflows, to validate the number of values, if they are correct number values or whatever. This is one of the best places to learn right now, I'd say. I think the best way to learn a language is by reading a lot of code and, of course, practicing, trying to write. So, yeah, you can pick up some small exercises, try to implement a staking protocol or anything that is simple. That's a good approach, yeah. So, it's very interesting what you're saying because there are not many resources, and you cannot just Google the error and find it right away. There are no resources about security pitfalls and security problems, so it's even more not mature. But lucky us, there are not that many protocols on mainnet, even if there is any. I don't know how much money there is there, but it's very early.

so there is not much money in the stake right now, but it's very important that it will be built in a secure way, and there will be more and more resources. And I didn't tell it to you, but actually, I'm working with another business partner on gingersack. We are a security auditing, and we here especially focus on Cairo. And he started posting articles about Cairo. For example, the recent article was about the problems with integer overflows and fails and integers. Well, you have like the first 128 bytes and then the second 128 bytes, and how you can like manipulate it. So we will try also to contribute to the Cairo and Starknet Community because we like you. Likewise, we also believe that it's going to be huge, maybe not like Solidity and EVM, but it's a very important way to scale it up. And yeah, definitely. So it's very interesting evolvement to the scalability of blockchain. Sounds good, sounds great. The community really needs people like this. The community needs people who post blogs.

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StarkNet and Cairo How to Get Started With Cairo

JohnnyTime

The speaker, a blockchain developer, transitioned from Solidity to Cairo as their company pivoted to building a DeFi protocol on Starknet.

They have been coding with Cairo for the past three to five months and appreciate the unique use of "Felt" types in the language.

While they are bullish on the Starknet ecosystem and its smart developers, they are still more attracted to Ethereum and Solidity, citing Cairo's alpha version and coding challenges as potential drawbacks.

Challenges and Opportunities in Learning Cairo

Cairo, the programming language for StarkNet, has its challenges, including a lack of libraries and the need for recursion instead of for loops.

The language is still in its early stages, with version 1.

0 upcoming, which promises to bring improvements.

Resources for learning Cairo are scarce, but the StarkNet website offers comprehensive documentation for both the ecosystem and the language.

Learning Cairo Contracts and Security Best Practices

Open Zeppelin's Cairo contracts repository offers valuable best practices for coding, including protection from underflows and overflows.

Learning the language through code reading and small exercises, like implementing a staking protocol, is recommended.

The speaker is also involved in a security auditing business, Gingersack, focusing on Cairo and contributing to the community through articles on common security issues.

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Users frequently post valuable insights and resources, making it a great place for learning.

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